The 2024-25 NBA season officially tips off on Oct. 22, and while we’re still over a month away, we’re already gearing up for all the action. That means resetting things and looking at every team around the league to figure out what their outlook is once the season tips off.
Before we can do things like predicting how team’s will fare, we have to see what the biggest questions are facing all 30 squads. We’re breaking it down division by division, and we’ve already looked at those in the Eastern Conference, contemplating everything from will the Celtics repeat as champions to if the Heat will trade Jimmy Butler. For a deeper dive on all of those divisions you can find them here:
Now we’re going to take a look at the Southwest Division. We’ve got the defending Western Conference champions in the Dallas Mavericks wondering if Klay Thompson is the missing piece, to seeing if Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies can pick up where they left off two years ago. Some of these questions may not get answered until the end of the season, or even a couple years from now, but they’re worth thinking about as the 2024-25 season nears.
Mavericks: Is Klay Thompson the missing piece?
One of the biggest takeaways from the NBA Finals was that the Mavericks needed another playmaker alongside Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. PJ Washington wasn’t impactful enough, and didn’t prove to be enough of a threat to make the Celtics change anything on defense. Neither was Derrick Jones Jr., or any of the handful of rotation players Jason Kidd threw in there to try and make something work. So they went out and got one of the best 3-point shooters in NBA history. Thompson’s resume speaks for itself, and while he’s just two years removed from winning his fourth championship, he has not been the same player since missing two consecutive years due to an Achilles and ACL tears. He was once a regular All-Star and All-NBA-level talent who played great defense during the height of Golden State’s dynasty. In the years since, he’s been anything but that.
Thompson’s coming…
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